Part 16 (2/2)
CHAPTER XLVI.
DYING OF OLD AGE, AT FIFTY-EIGHT.
Within the usual limits a.s.signed me in the daily routine of my profession, but on its very verge, there resided an individual of much general reputation for worth of character, but of feeble const.i.tution and cachetic or deranged habits, for whom as well as for his numerous family I had frequently prescribed.
He was at length, one autumn, unusually reduced in health and strength, and I was again sent for. There was evidently very little of real disease about him, and yet there was very great debility. All his bodily senses were greatly deranged, and all his intellectual faculties benumbed. His internal machinery--his breathing, circulation, and digestion--was all affected; but it seemed more the result of debility than any thing else. There was no violence or excess of action anywhere, except a slight increase of the circulation.
The man was about fifty-eight years of age. Had he been ninety-eight or even eighty-eight, I should have had no difficulty in understanding his case. I should have said to myself, ”Nature, nearly exhausted by the wear and tear of life, is about to give way;” or in other words, ”The man is about to did (?die) of mere old age.” But could he have been thus worn out at the age of fifty-eight?
I gave him gentle, tonic medicine, but it did not work well. Without increasing his strength, it increased his tendencies to fever. Yet, as I well knew, depletion would not answer in a case like this, whether of bleeding, blistering, or cathartics. In these circ.u.mstances, I contrived to while away the time in a routine of that negative character which, in true medical language, means laboriously doing nothing.
He was visited about twice a week. I heard patiently all his complaints, and endeavored to be patient under all my disappointments, for disappointments I had to encounter at nearly every step. No active treatment whatever would have the general effect I desired and intended.
If I gave him but a single dose of elixir paregoric for his nervousness, it only added, nine times in ten, to the very woes it was intended to relieve. My policy--and I fully believe it was the only true policy--was to leave him to himself and to Nature, as much as possible.
Though I have spoken here of what I regarded as the true policy in the case then under my care, yet, after all, the truest course would have been to call for consultation some wiser head than my own. Another individual, even though he were no wiser than I, might have aided me most essentially, in compliance with, and in confirmation of, the good old adage--”Two eyes see more than one.”
Why, then, did I not call on some inquiring and highly experienced physician? It was not that I was too proud to do so, nor that I was too jealous of my reputation. It was not that I feared any evil result to myself. It was rather because I did not, at first, think it really necessary; and then, subsequently, when I supposed it to be really needful, I feared my patient would grudge the expense. This fear, by the way, was grounded in something more than mere conjecture. The proposal had been practically made, and had been rejected.
In this general way things went on for some time. The friends grew uneasy, as they should have done; and one or two of them, now that it was almost too late, spoke of another physician as counsel. My own readiness and more than readiness for this seemed to have the effect to quiet the patient, though it had the contrary effect on his friends.
They appeared to construe my own liberality and the admixture of modesty and conscientiousness, which were conspicuous in my general behavior, into self-distrust, and hence began themselves to distrust me.
The patient's state of mind--for he was a man whose habits of thinking and feeling approximated very closely to those of the miser--more than once reminded me of some doggerel verses I have seen, perhaps in an old almanac, which are so pertinent in ill.u.s.tration of the point in my patient's character which these remarks are intended to expose, that I have ventured to insert them:--
”The miser Sherdi, on his sick-bed lying, Affrighted, groaning, fainting, wheezing, dying, Expecting every hour to lose his breath, Enters a Dervise: 'Holy Father, say, As life seems parting from this sinful clay, What can preserve me from the jaws of death?'
”'Sacrifice, dear son, good joints of meat,-- Of lamb and mutton for the priest and poor.
Nay, shouldst thou from the Koran lines repeat, Those lines might possibly thy health restore,'
”'Thank you, good father, you have said enough; Your counsels have already given me ease.
Now as my sheep are all a great way off, I'll quote holy our Koran, if you please.'”
At length my patient began, most evidently, to decline. There were various marks on him and in him, of approaching dissolution. When pressed, as I frequently was, to say definitely what the disease was--that is, to give it a name--under which Mr. ---- labored, I only replied that he was suffering from premature old age. This always awakened surprise, and led to much and frequent inquiry how it was that a man of fifty-eight years could be dying of mere old age. My explanations, whenever attempted,--for sometimes in my pride of profession I wholly evaded them,--were usually, in substance like the following:--
”Mr. ---- was feeble by inheritance. He never had that firmness of const.i.tution which several of his brothers now possess. Then, too, he was precocious. His body and mind, both of them, came to maturity very early; which, as you know, always betokens premature decay. Men live about four times as long, when not cut short by disease, as they are in reaching maturity. As he was apparently mature at fourteen or fifteen, he might very naturally be expected to wear out at or before sixty.
”But then, in addition to this, he has all his lifetime labored too hard, not only from necessity, but from habit and choice. His ambition, it is well known, has been unlimited, except by his want of strength to accomplish. He has only ceased to labor hard when he had strength to labor no longer, or when it was so dark or so cold or so stormy as to prevent him.
”Then of late years he has had the care and anxiety which are almost inseparable from the work of bringing up a numerous family. It is indeed true that he has not been called to that severest of all possible trials pertaining to the family, the pain of seeing that family or any of its members go materially wrong. Still he has had a world of care; of its effects none are aware who have not been called to the same forms of experience.
”There is one thing more; Mr. ---- has, at times, taken a good deal of medicine: not alcohol, in any of its forms, I admit, but substances which for the time were, in their effects, almost equally bad for him.
He has used tea immoderately, and even tobacco. His constant smoking has been very injurious to his nervous system, and along with other things has, doubtless, greatly hurried on the wheels of life.”
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